Mary Ann’s Baking Co. is up for anything. The Sacramento, Calif.-based provider of quality muffins, Danish and donuts wants to be the premier manufacturer for a wide range of customers: foodservice, retail, hospitality and other channels. In the past few years, the baking company has worked to diversify its customer base and invest in automation that will allow it to not only grow but also provide customized baked goods. 

The company has almost tripled its business over the past 10 years, in large part due to its commitment to high-quality products and good customer service. Being family-owned and operated allows Mary Ann’s Baking to be as nimble as possible. 

“We strive to reduce as much bureaucracy or red tape that is often found at larger corporations,” said Carl Kuhn, vice president of business development, and son-in-law to John Demas, who owns the company with his brother George. “We’re a family business, and customers know our family personally.” 

It’s the fact that Mary Ann’s Baking Co. remains a family business after all these years that makes Andy Demas, chief operating officer and third generation, most proud. 

“I cherish that we’re still family-owned,” he said. “Family comes first, and by family, I mean more than blood relations. It includes our employees and customers. That’s our core value: You are an extension of family.” 

The Demas family is one that works hard and has a vibrant spirit for baking, and that mentality has paid off as the company has thrived in the midst of consolidations and changing business climates over the past 60-plus years. 

Like many family-owned bakeries in the United States, the story of Mary Ann’s Baking is one of immigrants pursuing their American dream. Andrew and Pitsa Demas came to the United States in the late 1950s from Greece, and eventually settled in Chicago, where they were able to find work at Baking Hall of Famer Louis Kuchuris’ Mary Ann bakery, which produced bread, rolls, buns and pastries. Andrew Demas wasn’t a baker by trade, but his descendants pointed out that being Greek means having a love for breads and pastries. He had been a bus driver in Greece and had tried to find work throughout the United States as a tile setter without much success. But this opportunity in Chicago set him on a path to laying the foundation for the business his descendants are still building today. 

When Andrew and Pitsa Demas decided to move west to Sacramento, Calif., for warmer weather and to be closer to other relatives, they opened a bakery themselves and wanted to honor the bakery that gave them their start. They got the blessing of the Chicago Mary Ann bakery first, of course. 

“Andrew spoke with Mr. Kuchuris first, who said, ‘Yes, you can use the name,’ “ recalled George Demas, who sits on the company’s board of directors with his brother. “Those days, all it took was a phone call and a handshake.”  

The first iteration of the West Coast Mary Ann’s Baking was a retail shop on Folsom Boulevard and 48th Street that opened in 1961. 

By the late 1960s, Mary Ann’s Baking won a contract to supply sweet goods to McClellan Air Force Base, which served as a dispatch point for Vietnam War troops and supplies. The expanding wholesale business necessitated multiple moves: Howe Avenue, where they produced bread for their sandwich shop, and Arden Way, where retail shop plans never materialized because the wholesale business kept growing. The Demas family eventually was supplying four military base commissaries in the area. After moving to Midtown East Sacramento, the company established a direct-store-delivery (DSD) business for pies, Danish, and both cake and yeast-raised donuts while adding institutional and retail contracts.

However, in the mid-1990s, Mary Ann’s Baking gained co-manufacturing business for a large national foodservice sweet baked good manufacturer. This business transformed the company.  

“We needed greater efficiency, so we invested in our facility,” Andy Demas explained. “We purchased new packaging lines and makeup equipment. We developed high-speed automation for individually wrapped foodservice products, which remains a key element to our operations today.”

In 2002, the family purchased its current facility, which at the time was 135,000 square feet, to support its growing capabilities and capacity needs. By 2005, they had fully moved operations out of what the family affectionately calls “The Old Bakery” and the East Sacramento facility. 

“This building came with substantial refrigeration and infrastructure that we didn’t need to construct,” George Demas explained. 

Andy Demas added, “We avoided investing in ammonia systems. My uncle was right — this property offered the best infrastructure and foundation.”

This article is an excerpt from the April 2025 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Mary Ann's Baking Co., click here.